The Eighth Day

by Tom Avitabile

  Kronos planted himself, not moving. “What? She didn’t have a computer? Are you whacked out of your freaking mind?”

  “Look, in the early days she was in Naval Administration, a fancy name for the secretarial pool in the Navy.”

  “Is this going to be a long freaking story?”

  “When the computer first came along, the torpedo heads didn’t know what it was and assigned it to her command.”

  “You are boring me here.”

  “Well, when they started aiming guns and figuring out missile arcs with the damn things, her department grew. She had the first machine, an ENIAC.

  “Electronic numerical integrator and computer, yeah, so? I had a Commodore 64, big whoop!” Kronos crossed his arms, assuming a petulant stance.

  “The story goes that one day the whole machine went down. Couldn’t get it running. Techs and engineers all over it. No go. Then she got this idea. She walked over to a big rack, reached inside, and found a moth had flown into the cabinet and got stuck in a relay contact. She removed it and the thing started right up. She logged it officially as ‘Computer not functioning. It had a bug in it’!”

  Slowly Kronos turned. “That was this broad?”

  “Wherever you are, young grasshopper, she got there first.”

  “Yeah, so what’s with the no box till four days ago?”

  “She abandoned all technology. I read her papers when I was in college. She called for a halt to further computer research and enhancements, claiming that one day they would become too fast and too smart to overcome, and then whoever controlled the boxes could control the world.”

  “So they kicked her ass out of the Navy for that?”

  “If anybody was going to control anybody, Uncle Sam wanted to make sure it was us. C’mon ‘couzeen,’ let’s go see if she can help us.”

  “That’s ‘cucheen.’”

  Kronos looked back through the doorway. The old woman was busy doing something at the keyboard. He thought of Elmira. He had won the trust of the assistant warden when he fixed the warden’s son’s laptop, saving the old man a few hundred from a rip-off repair shop. Although he then became the de facto IT guy at the prison, he still had to return to his cell three times a day and report to the workout yard whenever the screws wanted him out there. Since he was a white-collar criminal, the macho guards didn’t fuck with him much. With the assistant warden’s blessing, his life there was better than most inmates’, but the crummiest, worst day of freedom was still a million times better than the best day in jail. Hiccock had gotten him out of there and Kronos didn’t want to go back. Reluctantly, he re-entered the house. Parks was at Hiccock’s laptop as the familiar audio signature for Microsoft Windows tinkled out of the machine.

  “Whoever came up with this was a pretty smart fellow,” she said to the two men as they approached.

  “Windows?” Hiccock said. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

  “It’s the Killer App of all time!” Kronos added.

  “The what?” Parks scrunched her nose, looking up over her bifocals.

  “Killer application?” Kronos sighed, not believing he had to explain this. “Software so hot, people buy the hardware just to use it.”

  “I think he’s agreeing with you that this guy was smart,” Hiccock said.

  “Yep, except he missed a few things like right …” she typed a few keystrokes, “… here. He’s got a big hole here …”

  Suddenly Kronos felt like he was falling. He experienced the sensation of wind whipping past his ears as he looked at the screen beyond the Admiral’s gray hair. Right there in uncompiled language was a nested loop error that had been missed by legions of proofers and beta-test site weenies who must have been paid millions by Microsoft.

  “He’d pay you a king’s ransom for finding that little bug,” Hiccock said.

  Kronos spun his head to Hiccock on the word bug. Whatever Parks had seen was forever lost as she hit the power button and said, “Ah, he’s a smart fella. He’ll figure it out on his own sooner or later.”

  Kronos was in awe. He had found a new guru. He pulled Hiccock aside. “She didn’t have a computer ’til four days ago?”

  Hiccock checked his watch. “Three days and twenty-one-and-one-half-hours, actually.”

  Kronos sat down and powered up the Sun System, positioning himself next to Parks. “Yo, how you doin’, Admiral? I’m Kronos. We’re going to work together and blast through that freaking firewall.”

  “What’s a firewall?” she asked.

  After a deep breath, Kronos started typing a hundred words per minute as he proceeded to teach and preach “Computers 102.” “It’s a form of active encryption.”

  “Like the Enigma code of World War Two?”

  “Yes, only those codes were passive, waiting for someone to figure out the key. A firewall actively rejects any attempt to decode it by changing itself and confusing the destructuring logic of the code breaker.”

  “So it slithers and slides when you probe it?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Show me how far you got when you hit this firewall,” Parks commanded.

  He typed like a machine gun as Parks watched the screen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Traffic Patterns

  THE REST STOP on the Jersey Turnpike provided an excellent observation point from which Tommy could research and plan his attack. At the end of the cracked asphalt parking lot, through the scratched windshield of his Camaro, he could observe the comings and goings of the stainless steel tanker trucks at night. The trucks formed a mobile pipeline into the storage tanks. This specific tank facility had already been earmarked by groups like Greenpeace and Earth First as one of the world’s most dangerous ecological time bombs. The intent of these organizations was to merely alert the citizenry to the obscene violations big corporations were imposing on Mother Earth. The most they envisioned, or could hope for as a result of their efforts, was the occasional protest or letter-writing campaign. They never in their worst nightmares counted on Tommy and his dedication to bringing instant justice and notoriety for the cause.

  Tommy’s mother died of breast cancer. Later it was learned that he had grown up in a “cancer cluster,” a cute name to define living over a biological and chemical atrocity. American Cyanamid, the behemoth chemical conglomerate, eventually settled out of court with no admission of guilt or assumption of responsibility on their part. After all the “incidental” legal expenses were siphoned off, in addition to the incurred attorney’s fees, the remaining dollars were distributed among the affected families. Tommy was awarded the paltry sum of $5,000 for his mother’s life, on which he was taxed.

  The righteous indignation over all of this didn’t coalesce in his mind until after he was hit with shrapnel during the Grenada incursion. His head wound terminated his military career … and gave him a remarkable new sense of perspective. He spent months in and out of veteran hospitals during recovery and rehabilitation. The doctors were encouraged when he showed a voracious appetite for reading. Of all that he read, it was the radical literature and the rants and ravings of eco-terrorists like the ELM that found a home in his newly ventilated brain. Eventually Tommy came to understand that he was also a wounded veteran of their “Great Cause.” His moment of epiphany came with the realization that his family had actually been attacked, raped, and pillaged by corporate greed and disregard for the sacred Earth.

  Over the previous two weeks, he had observed no less than three trucks, sometimes as many as five, drive through the gates into the facility after 12:30 AM. Inside there was a portico strategically located a quarter-mile away from the main tank farm. At this safe distance, every truck was inspected before it entered. Bomb-sniffing dogs were used, as were mirrors on long poles to check the undercarriage. The driver was wanded for any weapons.

  Tommy noticed, to his great satisfaction, that they only checked the lower half of the cab and undercarriage of the trailer. They never looked higher than the roof of the cab. He panned
his Nikon high-powered binoculars left and up the turnpike. There, approximately a quarter-mile from the turnoff the trucks took to get to the tank farm, was a pedestrian overpass. Although the span was fenced and wired to stop evil kids and other miscreants from hurling bricks into speeding windshields for fun, the access stairs, parallel to the turnpike, were only blocked by a three-foot railing. The light traffic, remote location of the rest stop, the overpass, and the tank farm all gave him precisely what he was looking for.

  ∞§∞

  For the last week, Tommy had practiced in his backyard with a seven-pound sack of sand. He laid down a two by four piece of wood, then paced off twenty-two feet and placed an upright Coke can on the ground. He spent two hours a night pitching the bag the twenty-two feet until he could crush the can 48 out of 50 times. Tonight he would make one last reconnoiter of the tank farm. Then, tomorrow, he would make his statement—one that would be heard around the world.

  At 9 PM, after consuming a microwaved franks-and-beans dinner, Tommy went out to the Camaro and turned the key … and got nothing. The battery was dead! After the obligatory punching of the steering wheel, he went inside to call his friend Arnold to ask for a jump, but got his answering machine instead. He left a short message asking Arnold to come over to charge the car and then dialed the number of the local cab company.

  The cab pulled up to the Long Island Railroad station just as the

  9:20 PM to Penn Station was pulling in. Tommy threw the driver a twenty for an eight-dollar fare and bolted. He boarded the train just as the doors shut. Passing the time by looking into the Long Island night, its sleepy homes and red-taillight-spotted roadways smeared by the scratched plastic window of the train, he reviewed every step of the plan and contemplated every possible scenario.

  When the train arrived in Manhattan, he walked through the shared terminal on his way to the New Jersey Transit Morristown line. A thirty-minute ride on that train would connect him to a bus route that had a stop a quarter-mile behind the Jersey Turnpike rest area. In the morning, Arnold would come over with his charger and tomorrow night he would have his Camaro in working order for his attack. It was a giant kickoff, of sorts, in that it would come on the eve of the big Sabot Society meeting scheduled two days later.

  ∞§∞

  Officer Darrel Spoon, a New York City Transit cop sitting behind the courtesy desk on the main concourse, noticed the man as he emerged from the track seventeen stairway. He watched him with one eye as he leafed through the clipboard with all his notices of the day. He found the picture of Thomas Regan that the FBI distributed to all points of embarkation. Unfortunately, at that instant, hundreds of Islander hockey fans swarmed down the escalators, hooting, hollering, pumped, and psyched because their Long Island team beat the New York Rangers in their own house, Madison Square Garden, located directly above the terminal. Darrel lost the bearded man in the thick of the crowd and keyed his radio, calling it in to the central dispatcher. Other officers immediately converged on the main concourse, fanning out toward the tracks.

  Penn Station was a tactical nightmare for tracking. The 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue subways ran down each side of the station with four tracks each. The Long Island Railroad and Amtrak trains shared twenty-one platforms. New Jersey Transit trains were squeezed in there with the others for good measure. In all, no less than five separate transit systems, six if you counted cabs and seven if you counted buses, connected Penn Station to the greater metropolitan area. Further confounding the issue was the fact that several major office buildings and one of the largest sports arenas in the world were right above it, offering any target a simple escalator or elevator ride to anonymity.

  Still, the transit cops did what they were trained to do, which was to doggedly focus on the trains. Based on the radio broadcast description, they stopped and detained any needle in this haystack of train passengers who even closely matched the FBI description. Tommy had missed all the action, since he had gone straight to the New Jersey Transit tracks and, for the second time that evening, boarded a train just as the doors closed. He never saw the two cops rush down the platform futilely as the train rolled out.

  ∞§∞

  Dennis was reading the latest David Baldacci thriller, nestled into his Barcalounger in the living room, when Cynthia answered the phone. It was just past 11:00 PM. He heard her say, “Yes indeed, he’s right here.” He got out of his chair with a grunt and took the call in his den.

  “Dennis, it’s Agent Burrell. We were just notified of a possible sighting of the beard at Penn Station.”

  “Who made the ID?”

  “It was a transit cop. They lost him.”

  “I’m going down there. Thanks for the call.” As he hung up, Cynthia looked at him questioningly.

  “They may have found our guy. I want to talk to the cop that spotted him.”

  ∞§∞

  Dennis got to Penn Station just at midnight as Darrel was getting off his shift.

  Burrell was just leaving, having already debriefed the officer. “You got in fast, Mallory.”

  “I didn’t want to miss this. Can you tell me anything?”

  “New rules, you know. You got the courtesy call. That’s as far as I can go. The rest is now part of an ongoing federal investigation. Sorry.”

  “Hey, no problem. Thanks for the heads up, Brooke. Er, mind if I talk to the officer?”

  “I don’t see why not, we’re done here.”

  Dennis made his way to the young transit cop who had gotten more attention in the last two hours than he had in his whole career. He assessed the black officer to be in his late twenties and in good physical shape, with eyes that looked like they could disarm a perpetrator at ten yards. That was the way cops were supposed to be … big, mean-looking, and tough.

  “Officer Spoon?”

  “Yes?”

  “Dennis Mallory, NYPD retired. I was wondering if you could help out a fellow cop here.”

  “What did you retire as?”

  “I was a detective first grade when I took the package.”

  “First grade, huh? My name’s Darrel.”

  “Darrel, I know you’re on your way home, so I’ll keep this short.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’d like to show you some additional pictures of the man you saw tonight.” Mallory pulled the comps and images from the manila envelope he had with him. As Darrel scrutinized them, he nodded.

  “Yeah, from these photos he looks more and more like the guy. How come the FBI didn’t have all these?”

  “My people took the originals. Tell me, how did you happen to spot him?”

  “I was manning the concourse desk when I saw him coming up the stairs from the tracks.”

  “Which tracks?”

  “Seventeen-eighteen. I observed him cross the concourse and before I could rustle up the FBI pic, I lost him in a bunch of pickled-to-the-gills yahoos fresh out of the hockey game. By the time we locked down the station, he was gone.”

  “In your opinion, was he going home or heading somewhere?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “Was he walking slow? Did he know where he was going?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, yeah, he was stepping lively. He took the escalator two steps at a time. So, yeah, he was heading somewhere on a schedule. Wow, you’re good. I think the FBI thinks he was coming home to New York.”

  “Well, I’ve had a little more experience. Where did the train on either seventeen or eighteen come in from?”

  “Another good question.” They went to ask the stationmaster.

  “Train number 4713 platformed at 10:14.”

  “Where did it come in from?”

  The white-haired railroad veteran ran his finger across a time schedule as he lifted his glasses up to read the fine print.

  “Ronkonkoma.”

  “Do you have the list of stops?” Darrel asked.

  “You can pick up a schedule downstairs.”

  “Better yet
, where is the crew?” Dennis said.

  “They’re in the yard on turn-around. They go out on the

  12:37 local.” Dennis looked at the clock. It was 12:36. “Can you hold that train?”

  “On whose authority?” Darrel flashed his badge. “On mine. This is a police matter.” The stationmaster picked up a yellow phone marked “dispatcher.”

  “Fred, hold the 12:37. It’s police activity.” He turned to Darrel. “How long?”

  “Just ’til we get onboard?” the young cop said, looking to the old cop for approval.

  “We?” Dennis said, smiling in surprise.

  Three minutes later they were down on track twenty-one and stepping onto the train. Darrel instructed the brakeman to notify the engineer of their arrival and release the hold on the train.

  “Officer Spoon, how did you know I wanted to get on the train?”

  “Million to one.”

  “As in, it was a million to one shot?”

  “No, as in our guy is lost in New York City. That gives him a million directions to go in and get lost. Where he came from, though, that is only one. So, yeah, I like the odds.”

  “Keep thinking that way officer and you’ll be a detective soon.”

  As the cars clanged and banged over switches deep within the bowels of Manhattan, Dennis interrogated the trainman. He was sitting in an engineer’s cab that doubled as the conductor’s cab when positioned at the rear of the train. Behind him, the receding rails were swallowed up by the tunnel’s darkness in the wake of the train. Dennis held up one of the photographs. “On your trip in this evening, did you see this man?”

  “What’s this all about, what’s he done?”

  “We just want to ask him some questions, that’s all.”

  “Fare beater?”

  “Now, why would you say that?” Dennis had found over the years that these first utterances were usually worth their weight in gold.

  “He looks like a guy who jumped on at the last second … in either Deer Park or Happaugue.”